Tag: greece

Since June 14, I’ve been traveling from the south coast of Greece toward Berlin, writing about migrants and migration facilitators — the people who help migrants get where they want to go.

My original idea was just to post this photo (above) of the Greek-Macedonian border near Idomeni, and that was going to be my entry on Macedonia. It was going to be a statement about what this little country represents to undocumented people who want to pass through.

But then I thought I would add some facts to make the image hit home. On March 9, the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia closed it’s borders to refugees, from then on out hunting down tresspassers throughout the entire country and forcing them back to the border. They beat people, kick them, break their arms with clubs, teargas them, push them into razor wire — these are the stories I’ve heard.

Polykastro, a Greek town near the Macedonian border with about 7,000 residents was the link to civilization for over 10,000 refugees holed up in massive unofficial camps in the area (Idomeni is 15 minutes away) before they were cleared in the last month. And the town was also a link to civilization for as many as 1,000 volunteers who had come in from all over the world to help mitigate a crisis that all the countries of the United Nations have been somehow unable to deal with. Now that the unofficial camps have been closed, the number of refugees in the area has dwindled and so has the number of volunteers. But Polykastro is a different place now. This is Part Three of the story. For Part One, click here. For Part Two, click here.

This is not a portrait of a quiet Christian town without a history, suddenly tossed into the stream of the real by current events. Every town has a history, and if it doesn’t then it will soon.

Polykastro is indeed quaint, it’s monuments sit in empty parks, grass crawling up their legs. There’s a football field and a dozen ice cream parlors. Most people you’ll meet on the street are ethnic Greeks, if that means anything. But in 1900, this was part of the Ottoman Empire, there were more Muslim Turks than Christian Greeks, and the Muslims were the ruling class. Then they fought some local battles, then the Empire collapsed.

Bit this is a portrait of a small, shrinking town, suddenly changed again, if only temporarily, by the massive refugee camps — Idomeni and Nea Kavala — that were pitched in fields nearby.

This is the second part of my visit to Polykastro, Greece, a small town transformed by the refugee camps in the area.

“What are you doing here?” Alaa asked me inside the lobby of the Park Hotel.

I had talked to a lot of people at the Park Hotel — a hang-out for residents of the nearby Nea Kavala refugee camp — but I hadn’t talked to him. A lot of people had just come up to me to make small talk. Alaa seemed somehow too serious for that. Not cold, but serious. I found myself sitting next to him at the coffee table under the TV, and I had said hi first.

“I’m writing a blog about the situation of refugees and volunteers,” I said.

“Oh, I thought you were here to help.”

Later that evening, around 8 p.m., I saw him again and smiled.

“So, do you want to see our camp?” he asked.

He knew and I knew that journalists could only get into the official military camps if they were invited by the Greek government. I didn’t have the time to visit the parliament. But since I’m writing about the difference between official and unofficial camps, I was certainly interested. When the Greek government cleared the massive unofficial camp at Idomeni in late May, they moved as many people as they could to official military-run camps, usually far outside cities and away from borders. But it’s hard for journalists to get in, and not a lot has been written about conditions at these places.

“Yes,” I said.

“Okay. I help you get in, you help me tell the world how bad our life is here.”

Polykastro, a Greek town near the Macedonian border, has about 8,000 residents and was the link to civilization for over 10,000 refugees holed up in massive unofficial camps in the area (Idomeni is 15 minutes away) before they were cleared in the last months. And it was also a link for as many as 1,000 volunteers who had come in from all over the world to help mitigate a crisis that all the countries of the United Nations had been somehow unable to prevent. Now that the unofficial camps have been closed, the number of refugees in the area has dwindled and so has the number of volunteers. But Polykastro is a different place now. This is Part One of the story.

When I arrived in the town it was already dark. I had taken the last bus from Thessaloniki with Eva, an independent volunteer from Germany whom I’d met in Athens. She knew Polykastro well, she’d been here when Idomeni was still around.

When the bus rolled up to the town line, she asked the driver if he could stop at the Park Hotel and he nodded knowingly. “We can stay here for free,” she explained. “Rooms are 20 euros, but volunteers can camp out back for free. At least that’s how it was last week.”

My first impression of it was that it was an American motel, stranded between dusty parking lots a mile from some empty casino. We slid open a gate on the side and walked through moon-pale gravel toward some dark trees. “Do you have a tent?” she asked. I didn’t. “That’s fine,” she assured me. “Some of these tents are empty. The volunteers leave them up for other people when they’re gone.”

The tent city at the harbour of Piraeus, Greece, is an unofficial refugee camp, constantly under threat of evacuation, where over 2,000 refugees from Syria and Afghanistan have been residing, many of them without papers, for several months. A team of dedicated — and overtaxed — volunteers from a few small NGOs, as well as some “free agents,” manage the residents’ health, safety, hygiene, and even recreation. Because they are an unofficial camp, they get little more than emergency supplies from the UN refugee agency. Most of what’s done at the camp is an improvisation and a cooperation between the volunteers and the residents. There’s almost always a feeling of conflict in the air, but also of humor. (Some names of people have been changed.)

It’s the morning after the night I spent at the port. Samrend is standing over me smoking with his foot resting on the concrete barrier I’m sitting on. His tan is deep, his hair sandy brown, his golden Aviator shades reflecting my own skinny figure back at me. He looks like a Kurdish Abercrombie model who’s been to war. In fact, he has been to war. He fought ISIS with the Iraqi military last year.

Everyone else is hiding in the shade except us two.

“We have a lot volunteers. A lot good. One crazy.” He starts laughing at his joke and decides to repeat it. “One crazy. You know who.”

The tour began like any orthodox tour of a prized facility. “Here we have the common room where we eat together,” said Padelis proudly, with a Greek accent. “Here is the café.”

Then someone interrupted in rapid Greek and and Padelis excused himself. “I’m sorry. I have to go. I am also the doctor here.”

This is the Hotel City Plaza, a hotel in the heart of Athens that was abandonned by it’s owner during the crisis and taken over by radical pro-refugee activists who wanted to provide a functioning alternative to the official military-run camps in the arid outskirts of the lively city.

It’s nearly dinnertime at the refugee camp at Port Piraeus and everyone seems to be pretty hungry. It’s Ramadan and most people here are observing the Muslim fast, which means no eating til sumset. One of the volunteers here told me that when the holy month started, the Greek Navy (which supplies the bulk of the food) only brought in half the rations. No lunch, was their reasoning. The volunteers had to explain that Ramadan is about fasting, not starving.